Witty, poignant, and true.
Atlanta-based author Johnson (Pagan Babies, 1993; stories: I Am Dangerous, 1996) returns to familiar themes with a southern family brought together, transformed, and in part destroyed by AIDS.
Thom and his sister Abby haven’t spoken in four years, not since Thom exiled himself after a family incident at the time of their father’s death. Thirtysomething, he now lives in Atlanta, the family’s hometown. A successful realtor, Thom has recently lost his boyfriend to AIDS and is sustained by a wide circle of friends. It’s a bittersweet existence, brunch and Bloody Marys on the one hand, hospital visits and anti-viral cocktails on the other. Older sister Abby, meanwhile, is a schoolteacher who lives at home with Mom in Philadelphia. Single, getting a bit frumpy and more than a bit bitter, she spends too much of her time taking care of out-to-lunch Mom and is well on her way to redefining Catholic spinsterhood for the 21st century. When Thom gets in touch to tell her he’s HIV-positive, Abby takes charge. She flies to Atlanta with the intent of bringing Thom back and brokering a family reconciliation. But like a Henry James heroine on her first trip to Florence, Abby comes alive in Atlanta. After she reestablishes her intimacy with Thom, she finds herself a dark and sinister lover, a new wardrobe, a different hair-do, and several new friends. With Thom’s old and Abby’s new friends, they create a family of their own, and their collective tales, interrupted by gossip and drinks, laughter and occasional tears, sends the novel flying along. But the inevitable can’t be avoided, and, after putting it off for months, Mom comes to visit: a scary combination of southern politeness and northern frankness, she pulls the story together. Her presence sends it ricocheting between family memories and the troubled present. The odd reunion, however imperfect and inarticulate it may be, bathes the closing pages in love and sadness.
Witty, poignant, and true.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55583-637-2
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Alyson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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